gt05254 wrote:
Totally outside of the fly fishing world, but Nymphs got me through aquatic entomology at Cornell, rather than the textbooks required for the course. I shared that with Ernie and he thought that was pretty cool. (I'm sure he didn't say "pretty cool.")
Nymphs was used there for less then a year as a textbook. It has so many errors that they switched right back to what they were using before. The book may
have been fairly easy to understand but the amount errors made things worse for most people.
As for new Nymphs vol 1 & 2, they are more textbook like then the first Nymphs. Like the early Nymphs the patterns & colors are just descriptions with
no color samples, the patterns are also overly complex. The writing is also classic Ernie, drawn out and tends to become boring before the punchline, but most
of the little stories are fun. I do think this is an amazing collection of work but I would say it is done in a way that is fair at best. The drawings do make
the book showing detail that can be easily captured by a photo but color pictures speak 1000 words when it comes to bug color. Vol. 2 is great because it
covers a full range of insects in the water other then mayflies, something many times overlook or briefly covered in such detail.
Joe Fox
